Sacrifice

"If we have never experience what it is to give sacrificially, we may approach it like our first dive from the high diving board, a major moment at the time but really ordinary after that, a new and richer way to approach life."

-Br. Eldridge Pendleton, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Joy

"Joy is a mystery. It's as mysterious as our suffering. And, I think, it's as boundless as our suffering. Somehow, in God's economy, the one is creating the space for the other."

-Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Judgment

"For to be judged by Jesus is to stand before Jesus naked, just as I am, and to allow him to look at us with love, and love us into repentance for our sins, and to receive his loving words of forgiveness--and then to be set free, and even know taste the first fruits of eternal life."

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Good News

"The people of God have always known days of laughter--and days of tears. And we will, too. That may not sound like good news, but let me assure you, it is. It is good news because God is up to something. It is good news because God means us nothing but our good."

Br. Kevin Hackett, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Watch

"Some of us Christians are too eager to find in current events evidence that will tell us when and how the world will end and the Son of Man will return. Others of us have lost our hope in God's promise and come to believe only in ourselves and in our human institutions. The Gospel challenges us all. "Watch, be alert, keep awake," it warns us. Christ will surely come."

-Br. David Vryhof, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Fear

"Do not be afraid. The Gospel challenges us to take a new path and to begin today."

-Br. Eldridge Pendleton, The Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Hope

"Hope is unruly. Hope floats, when it shouldn't. Hope, simply defined, is the capacity to imagine a future. Like memory--which I would define as the ability to rightly recall the past--hope is an essential element of what it means to be fully human and fully alive. Without hope, we die."

-Br. Kevin Hackett, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Triumph

"We feel so ineffective in a system where money buys power. What can we do in the midst of this great travesty? Perhaps we just need more faith in the triumph of small things, the little that we can do."

-Br. Mark Brown, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Journey

"The spiritual journey is a journey towards God in which we discover that we are beloved children of God and in which we learn to live our lives grounded in that reality. The Scriptures are given to instruct and guide us along this path."

-Br. David Vryhof, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Yes

"When we say 'yes' to God, our 'yes' echoes that of Mary's and 'the Word [becomes] flesh and [lives] among us' here and now and we, like Mary, become God bearers and our eternal destiny is fulfilled for all time."

-Br. James Koester, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Conversion

"It is the source of our greatness and our dignity as children of God, that God won't let us be comfortable with the familiar, the materialistic.

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Prayer

"The real quest for our prayer is to learn to pray our lives. It's to practice the presence of God in every moment, every place that we move, every person whom we touch, every word that we speak or hear."

-Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Growth

"We often refer to God's presence in our hearts: in a sense, the Divine Presence is the heart of our heart, the core of our core. For the Christian, the Divine Presence is something that grows within us, like the Christ child in the Virgin's womb, we might say. Or, as Paul puts it, it is not our own life that we live, but Christ's life in us."

-Br. Mark Brown, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Faith

"Faith gives us the power to see life very clearly, to admit that sometimes it seems all wrong and still to know that, somehow, it is all right?

-Br. David Vryhof, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Patience

"Take time each day to gaze. Sit on your porch. Take time to savor what is now in your life, today. Pray and practice today the living and enjoying of your life in every way you can, especially given what you cannot change."

-Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Advent is Here!

That's right, Advent ... NOT Christmas. Don't know what Advent is? Well you're in luck! There just happens to be this handy dandy little video you can watch to clear things up for you (hooray!). You can find the original YouTube video here. Enjoy! 

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.

Advent

"Today is a new beginning, as we gather to wait and watch for the coming of the Lord in the person of the Babe of Bethlehem, just as parents wait for the birth of their child. Like them we wait with eager longing, mixed, I'm sure with fear and dread, as to what this child will mean for them and their lives."

-Br. James Koester, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

And may the peace of the Lord be always with you.